Elise R. Goldman

NAPLES — Elise R. Goldman passed away peacefully in the presence of loved ones on Thursday, March 28, 2013 in her home in North Carolina.

Elise was born on July 21, 1918 in Norfolk, Va. After graduating from Randolph Macon Women’s College in Virginia, where she majored in Greek and Latin, she went north to New York City to study modern dance with Martha Graham, and to work on a Ph.D. at Columbia University. While at Columbia, she met Morton J. Goldman (Mort), the love of her life. They were married in 1942, and spent the next years on stateside Army bases, primarily in Louisiana where Mort ran a rehabilitation center for soldiers wounded in World War II.

After leaving the Army, following a dream that Elise shared, Mort purchased a small girls’ camp (Camp Kearsage) on Long Lake, which he founded as Camp Takajo for boys in 1947. Naples and Long Lake became a second home from that moment on, where Mort and Elise and their growing family spent several months each year.  Both Elise and Mort were a part of the founding of Lakes Environmental Association in the 1970s, and over the years Elise was an active and devoted board member. She also volunteered for many summers at the Naples Library.

Elise greeted each day with a smile and a lust for living that was as infectious as it was inspiring. She was compassionate and unfailingly generous, witty and keenly discerning. She made acquaintances friends, and made friends family. She loved wild flowers, loons and damsel flies, music and books, hot dogs at the old Howard Johnson’s on the Causeway, hosting lobster fests with friends and family, preparing blueberry pancake breakfasts for her grandchildren, walks in the woods, and morning paddles on Long Lake in her beloved yellow canoe. She was a talented photographer, and, impervious to pesky mosquitos, would spend dawn in a bog to capture the morning light and awakening wildlife on film, or would stretch out in the mud to snap close-up photos of a frog. Most of all, she was devoted to her husband and family.

After Mort retired from camping in the fall of 1988, and passed away in 1990, Elise continued to spend many months each year at the family compound on Long Lake, joined by her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

She is survived by a sister, Anne Reid of Chapel Hill, N.C.; by her five children, Judy Wideman of Naples, Roger Goldman of Charlotte, N.C., Nancy Zorensky of Conifer, Colo., John Henry Goldman of Princeton, N.J. and Paul Goldman of Skillman, N.J.; 10 grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in her name to Lakes Environmental Association, 230 Main Street, Bridgton, ME 04009.